HISTORY AND LITERATURE.—To give a complete history of hysteria it would be necessary to traverse the story of medicine from the time of Hippocrates to the present. A complete bibliography would require an immense volume. Volume vi. of the _Index Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office, United States Army_, which has appeared during the present year (1885), contains a bibliography of nearly seventeen double-column pages, most of it in the finest type. The references are to 318 books and 914 journals. The number of books and articles cited as having appeared in different languages is as follows: Latin, 99; Greek, 2; German, 180; British, 177; American, 159; French, 449; Italian, 75; Spanish, 45; Swedish, 12; miscellaneous, 34. Even this wonderful list probably only represents a tithe of the works written on this subject. Those desirous of studying it from a bibliographical point of view can do so by consulting this great work. Many as are the names and voluminous as is the literature, certain names and certain works are pre-eminent—Sydenham, Laycock, and Skey in England; Tissot, Briquet, Charcot, and Landouzy in France; Stahl, Frank, Eulenburg, and Jolly in Germany; and in America, Weir Mitchell. The greatest work on hysteria is the treatise of Briquet.[6] [Footnote 6: _Traité clinique et thérapeutique de l'Hystérie_, par le Dr. P. Briquet, 1859.] Mitchell[7] has organized into a scientific system a valuable method of treating hysteria, and has given to the world a series of studies of some types of the affection best or only seen in the United States. [Footnote 7: _Fat and Blood: An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria_, and _Clinical Lecture on Diseases of the Nervous System, especially in Women_.] Among other American monographs on hysteria and allied subjects worthy of note are the contributions of Shaffer on _The Hysterical Element in Orthopædic Surgery_;[8] Seguin's essay on _Hysterical Symptoms in Organic Nervous Affections_;[9] Beard's volume on _Nervous Exhaustion_;[10] the chapters on _Hysterical Insanity, etc._ in Hammond's text-books;[11] and the papers of G. L. Walton[12] on _Hystero-epilepsy_. Spitzka, Mann, Hughes, and {208} Kiernan have made important contributions to the psychical aspects of the subject in various American medical journals. [Footnote 8: _The Hysterical Element in Orthopædic Surgery_, by Newlin M. Shaffer, M.D., New York, 1880.] [Footnote 9: _Archives of Neurology and Electrology_, for May, 1875, and _Opera Minora_, p. 180.] [Footnote 10: _A Practical Treatise on Nervous Exhaustion (Neurasthenia)_, by George M. Beard, A.M., M.D., New York, 1880.] [Footnote 11: _A Treatise on Diseases of the Nervous System_, and _A Treatise on Insanity in its Medical Relations_.] [Footnote 12: _Brain_, vol. v. p. 458, Jan., 1883; _Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease_, vol. xi. p. 425, July, 1884.]